Forever
by son-of-puji
Summary: Centuries of coexistence cannot be labeled only with one term. They are each other's ally and enemy, and everything in between, and all that at the same time. Two brothers linked beyond love and feud, envy and denial for eternity.
1. Forever brothers

**Summary:** Centuries of coexistence cannot be labeled only with one term. They are each other's ally and enemy, and everything in between, and all that at the same time. Two brothers linked beyond love and feud, envy and denial for eternity.

**A/N:** I decided to overwrite the previous version, and make a somewhat longer fic out of it.  
[Edit]: I realized my scene separators were lost, so I reuploaded the chapter.

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**Forever…**

**Forever brothers**

Maybe it's the absence of the motley stretch of the Bifröst on the skyline but Asgard, this afternoon, just like earlier this morning, dawn and night, appears dull to Thor's eyes. The towers, normally golden needles piercing the canvas of the skies, gleam with coppery matt. He believes it's in his heart, though: the lack of luster. With relentless clear-sight, he knows it wouldn't go away for a very long time, if ever.

There is a weight on his shoulder that doesn't let him breathe, and he crumbles under it, and around the bruise on his soul and memories, too. The latter hurts the most, the bruise he cannot reach and cure. The real bruises, cuts and wounds, they don't matter but he doesn't like to even look at them because when he looks, he remembers. And when he does, the weight gets even heavier.

But he remembers nonetheless because, in all brutal honesty, this is all he has.

It is sad that one would reach out for things only when they are drifting away; that we take someone's presence for granted, and appreciate it only when they aren't beside us anymore.

At the thought, Thor grimaces. He is not the sharpest mind around, he knows it, so he has to settle with unoriginal realizations but sounding cliché doesn't make it any less true. Words, in fact, are Loki's territory.

_Were_.

His mind reels back, and he corrects himself again, _are_, words _are_, and it's forced, he is aware of that, like he could make it true just by sheer will.

He frowns. Again, a reminder. Like the tiniest particles that build up the whole universe, found in every object and every creature – this is how Thor sees him everywhere, in everything. In secluded places where they used to hide when they were kids and wanted to challenge Heimdall and his all-seeing eyes. He sees him on the main courtyard of the Asgard royal palace where he never got tired of attempting to train his brother to be a better warrior, a warrior of strength and stamina, skills and styles, not one of magic, wile and tricks – ironically, just a day ago, Loki gave him a very good sample of what he's learnt. He was devastating like a rolling earthquake, driven by venom and rage Thor has never seen before, never thought his brother possessed.

Loki has always been the master of disguise, and that also meant the disguise of his true emotions. Thor has never once seen him truly upset, and it's made him muse many times if it is him who got all the temper in their bloodline. Sometimes he envied his brother for being so composed, so level-headed and cool even in hard situations, never once wavering when a clear-sighted decision had to be made. Thor himself tends to go headfirst against obstacles, sometimes literally so, and if it wasn't for Loki, he would have broken his skull more than once. Loki was his other half, and they formed a whole and invincible team: Loki is everything Thor isn't, and vice versa, and he always prided himself on being the only one who could sense if something bothered his younger brother.

Until now.

Maybe he only _imagined_ he did. Or he could sense it when the matter was of little significance.

Or rather, most probably, when Loki let him.

Thor wonders if he's ever known him, ever really _seen_ him. If over the course of all these numberless years, Loki has shut him out completely. It hurts. He always considered them good brothers. He has always been secretly very proud that they were so close, many times, half-drunk on mead, he boosted about it like a content father, driving his friends inane.

Yesterday was different. It was uncharacteristic of Loki to unleash such madness he did then. It is more than obvious there is something deeply wrong in the whole picture but he doesn't know what triggered it suddenly.

His gaze swims at the glimmering stripe of the damaged Bifröst, many ghosts of hateful reminiscences laced in its shine, and they dull it for him, the colors and glow – he fears maybe forever. He leans against the railing of the dining hall balcony, and closes his eyes with the phantom pain burning behind them for many restless hours, but he can't shut the words out of his mind that wounded him more than any of the physical blows Loki could ever land on him. He remembers his eyes, filled with fury and madness. But he saw his tears, too.

"Son."

Thor starts. On the stairs leading up to the balcony, there stands his father. He hasn't heard him coming; a trait, Thor has believed so far, only Loki possessed in the family: he was like smoke, he could appear and vanish as he liked, and it made him somehow unearthly, intangible. His magic was always beyond Thor's comprehension, and thus, he felt a bit ashamed of it in hindsight, even beyond his valuation.

"Father."

There is no invitation in his tone but Odin doesn't pick up on it. Thor longs to be left alone with the mingled threads of memories until he is able to unravel them. There is something, words, hateful words, hurts exchanged, that he is rolling around in his head, chewing on them from every side till they get almost mangled and distorted; things he wants to understand and decipher but doesn't see clearly but maybe because some of the pieces are kept from him – or he is simply reluctant to accept what they might imply. He needs peace and solitude. Other people call it grief but that hasn't arrived with its full impact yet. It is like losing a limb: first it is numbness and shock, and after it wears off comes the unbearable pain. He knows it will come for him, too.

"There is something beyond sorrow that bothers you," Odin remarks. Thor almost smiles. No wonder Odin is the Allfather.

He clears his throat. His iron fingers tighten around the marble railing as he stares ahead, pain-inflicted memories exploding behind his forehead with rainbow colors, with ice-cold golden scepter-sweeps. He sees them fight like he is only an outsider because that cannot be them, they couldn't be going against each other with intention to _really_ hurt. He inhales, and by far not out of plucking up courage but more of suppressing what eventually spills out of him like bile he cannot swallow any longer.

"He told me he isn't my brother. That he never was. Why would he-" he swallows. It's an open wound on his heart.

He feels betrayed, robbed of all the fond memories he keeps about their childhood, their youth, about all their lives together, as if he is able to figure out only now that they weren't fond for Loki. That he regards those years otherwise.

"I don't understand what got into him."

From the corner of his eye, he looks at his father, now standing beside him. Odin seems older now, much older than he's ever seen him be. It is no wonder, though: he just watched his younger son fall into nothingness the day before. Maybe, in a way, Thor thinks darkly, he even made him to.

"What happened while I was away?"

The silence is short but heavy. The golden eyepatch glints against the setting sunlight. "He learnt the truth of his origin. You are not blood brothers."

Suddenly, Thor feels light-headed. He understands every single word but together they don't make any sense. _Not. Blood. Brothers._

"What do you mean?"

Odin announces, like it is that simple, like it isn't changing something fundamental in his life: "He's the son of Laufey."

"Laufey? Loki is…" his incredulousness is stuck in his throat. "My _brother_ is Jötun?"

He was just told they weren't blood related but calling Loki his brother is his way of protest. It hooks him and the moment to reality and sanity because otherwise it sounds like a twisted joke. Sounds like something he could trip on and hit his head so hard his skull would split.

"After the battle against Laufey, I found his son. He was newborn and barely alive. He was a runt, and thus, abandoned and left to his fate. I'll be honest with you, Thor: I had no love for the infant but I took pity on him. Due to the respect I felt for his father, I took the son."

Thor holds his breath in the ensuing contemplating silence. There is insinuation in his stance, and rage he isn't really sure where it is coming from.

"Yes, I had other intentions as well, intentions as the king of Asgard. I had a hope that when Loki grows up, he can take over the throne of Jötunheim and we would have peace. He was born to be a king, just like you. Only not the king of Asgard, but the king of Jötunheim."

Thor doesn't want to say it: the king of a world Loki grew up hating, fearing. Son of a man who took the eye of their father. They grew up on the same tales, the stories their father told them about the creatures living in ice and rock fortresses and being strong as an earthquake. How many times they played and fought the imaginary army of frost giants. And much later the not so imaginary ones. Now Loki must have thought he has been the enemy within all along. Thor can only imagine how such knowledge can split someone's mind.

_Oh Loki_, he thinks bitterly. _I wish I was here with you_.

Never before has he hated his father's forethought, how he reduced Loki's whole existence to strategic steps drawn on parchment.

"So he was just a mean, leverage to secure some tactical movement? You took him so you would have your long wished treaty? You told him that, too?"

"Yes."

The silence is suffocating like a too tight chain mail that cuts in his skin, drawing blood, leaving marks. He believes this moment would leave its mark just the same way forever.

For the first time, Odin turns fully toward him, giving an unwavering glance with his only eye. "But you have to realize that over these years I grew to love him as my own. He failed to see it."

"Maybe you failed to show it, father," Thor remarks sharply. He doesn't look at Odin. Doesn't want to see if it hurt or he really nailed the truth.

Odin has never been a flawless father. He is more of a warrior, and whereas it was perfectly efficient for Thor, he can see where it did damage to Loki. Odin had no ability to deal with the sensitive, multilayered personality of his other son. Loki had a clockwork-delicacy to him – one piece breaks, one tiny thin golden cogwheel, and everything else stops too. Odin's mistreatment of his younger son, now Thor can see it clearly, led up to this tragedy.

There is a nagging feeling, though, deep in his guts, and he cannot hide it, cannot avoid it, and it tells him it wasn't only their father's mistreatment. It tells him he was just as much guilty. He and his father: they are carved of the same material, war-hardened with chivalry-veining, and in the same things both of them failed Loki.

Disturbed, Thor suddenly remembers what his mother told him, how Loki saved their father from the assassination Laufey planned. He knows his brother that much, with the new knowledge he easily unravels the events – it was all Loki's doing, silver-tongued, cunning Loki's doing: he set up the frost giants to finally turn against them.

He killed his own father.

He launched a plan of genocide against his own race.

Was he trying to wipe them off the earth so he could forget they ever existed? So everyone else as well would forget such beings every existed? Like it could annul the fact that his ancestry lies with them. Like it could turn the wheel of events back and make him be an Asgardian.

His frown deepens with a sudden onslaught of mortification. M_ake him be an _Asgardian_? _

It is distressing how a part of his mind could so easily wrap around the new facts. It is unfair to Loki. Being a frost giant in origin doesn't make him cease being an Asgardian. Shouldn't make him cease being _Thor's brother_. And on a level he is ashamed of, this is how it feels. A brother who isn't really a brother. He despises himself for the idea. He wants to blame it on Odin because it is easier. His father's words attempt to overwrite his memories and feelings, make him reevaluate what they had, and suddenly he doesn't know what bracket he should put them anymore, and he feels confused and cheated.

"Maybe I did," Odin says suddenly, it is more of a murmur like he is too embarrassed to say it louder. "I should have considered he was different."

Thor's gaze darkens because he wouldn't be able to tell if by difference Odin means Loki's personality or his Jötun origin, and suddenly he recognizes how everything he has always considered their stabile family life with its merry and gloomy moments but never with doubts and betrayals is corroded for good.

-o-

The old trouble with sleep, after so many undisturbed centuries, comes back again with full force.

When they were children, they shared the same bedchamber (oh those holy days, and they never really argued over anything as Loki was never interested in his wooden weapons and clay knights, just as he didn't care about the strange books Loki preferred over anything), and for him Loki's almost silent snoring belonged just as much to the room as the toys or the gauze curtains around their respective canopy beds that they always kept open to be able to see and hear each other better: it fought away the menace of monsters under the bed. Even when years later they moved in their separate quarters, he missed the soothing sound of his brother's breathing and had trouble to fall asleep for a surprisingly long time.

There was one time Loki fell so ill he had to be moved to Eir's chambers for many days. They were still children, too young to understand the hushed whispers between his parents and Eir, and Thor recalls how frightened he was, how pale Loki looked, how fragile. Thor threw a tantrum, he wailed, he cried, he vowed, he begged until they would let him in or commanded him to leave, but he would eventually sneak in the infirmary anyway and lie beside his brother throughout the night, curled up against him like Freya's cats under the autumn sun. He was so used to the soft respiration that he didn't find rest without it. He had the strangest impression that if he wouldn't be there to hear and invigilate his breathing, Loki would pale into the soft pillows by morning, and Thor would never be able to find him again.

And now he feels the same dread he felt back then: the helplessness and guilt oozing in his limbs like slow poison because he has again the unsettling notion that if he had looked close enough, had watched Loki earnest enough, he wouldn't have slipped away, wouldn't have faded so Thor might never be able to see him again.

This nagging blame he cannot seem to shake is what keeps him awake at night. Listing all his possible missteps that led up to this situation, and the more he thinks about it, the less he understands anything.

Sometimes he falls into shallow slumber but then it is always the same nightmare: always losing Loki in the most creative ways his mind can come up with, and when he wakes in sweat and horror, even with his eyes snapped open, he still can see him falling. He can still feel the lurch of the sudden phantom lightness in his arm as Loki's weight dropped from the end of Gungnir as he let go.

On many occasions he wants to ask his father, other men who are wiser than Thor, what could be on the other end of the abyss, if Loki could fall and eventually land somewhere they could find him, if there has ever been someone who made the same fall and came back, if they have the slightest of chance for Loki to survive such fall, but he dreads the answer and keeps his questions locked in his heart.

As days go by, he loses hope. There is no news from Loki, and he believes if he was alive, he would find a way to contact them. He _wants_ to believe so. Thor doesn't want to line up the other possibilities: the possibility that he might be so severely injured that he is not able to make such efforts; the possibility that he _doesn't_ wish to contact them – that with his fall, he tore all bonds that tied him to Asgard.

In utter despair, in the darkest hour of the night when fatigue reaches its peak and overwrites his pervious hesitation that roots in the belief that he wouldn't be able to handle the emotional burden just yet, Thor stumbles down the shadow-filled hallway toward Loki's quarters, the short walk never before so heavy in his legs.

He thought he was prepared for every type of reaction the sight of his brother's chamber would raise in him but when he opens the door and the torches spring into life along the walls, the shock binds him to the spot.

His brother's room, his neat, overly fastidious brother's room is a mess, and somehow it hits him more severely than the usual state of the chamber would have. The scattered parchments, capes and breeches left draped around the back of armchairs, books and short knives lying in a strange heap, boots thrown in the corner in a careless manner seem to indicate the chaos Loki might have had in his head those days.

Thor stares at the upturned world, and the guilt sinks in him into impossible depths to bring him down. Loki went through all this alone.

He struggles to put the recent events in the appropriate recess of his mind but in Loki's room, in the chaos, he finds solace.

The scent is the same there, if somewhat more bitter. Thor doesn't dare to touch anything, doesn't there to lie on the bed and disturb the only untouched and neat object in the room: Loki's sheets, and it makes Thor wonder if Loki even slept at all during the Ragnarök of his last days on Asgard.

He lies on the thick fur carpet at the foot of the bed, and in the familiar scent, among the familiar tones and shapes of Loki's room, sleep finally finds him.

-o-

"I still see her."

His eyebrows lower as Thor, somewhat abashed, steals a glance at the Gatekeeper. "Thank you."

He feels a pang of guilt that he didn't have Jane on his mind. Not this time.

Like Heimdall, he stares ahead, over the splinter-like ruins of the Bifröst bridge, through the cold drizzle rising from the waterfall beneath. It has been a long time he set his feet on the bridge, he cannot tell if days, weeks or months, but it feels like a decade without Loki around him, and sometimes he hardly remembers all those centuries spent in brotherhood before the incident.

"What is there, good Heimdall? Beyond the rainbow bridge. Beyond Midgard, beyond the Nine Realms."

"Other worlds, other creatures even the Allfather doesn't know, even he hasn't met them."

Neither of them says anything for a very long time. Thor watches the stars smeared on the skies around them, watches them blink and waver, and he tries to assess if he was ready. Not to ask, but to hear the answer. That is always the harder part. The Gatekeeper stands patiently, and Thor simply knows for certain that he is waiting for the question he can foresee coming.

"Can you see him?"

Heimdall doesn't stir. For a moment, he wonders if Thor is aware how his voice always softens when he mentions his brother. The mighty, chesty Thor who seemingly feels no fear has always had only one great weakness, and ever since he is able to talk, it betrays him. Heimdall is unable to comprehend how Loki could ever miss that, how he could doubt it.

His eyes, unblinking, turns unseeing for Asgard, for the Bifröst under their boots, maybe even for the Nine Worlds. A frown laces his forehead, and the old sour taste in his mouth feels familiar: Loki has always been able to hide from him, even in this very realm, right under his nose. He has never been too fond of the younger prince.

"No, I cannot."

He ponders if Thor really shrank a few inches, collapsed into himself like a mine. It looks so.

Thor wants to ask so many things, such knowledge has never been in his interest, it has always been Loki to dive in subjects beyond what eyes can perceive. He thinks of the ever growing pain in his chest. They are demi-gods, basically immortals, and it makes him wonder if the pain stays with them for eternity, too. If the sensation of loss is immortal, too.

"If we die, is there a way back from Helheim?" he asks instead.

Heimdall doesn't reply. This is a question that could shake Asgard, shake the stars, a thought so outrageous and against all rules that Heimdall is puzzled how Thor could even think of it. He cannot decide if Thor really needs the answer or if he is talking rather to himself because he doesn't egg him on to reply.

Fine wind rises, million cold water drops sprinkle against their faces. Heimdall isn't sure if he wants to give solace because the words he has on his lips aren't delivering too much consolation. But they are true, and now this is the only thing he can offer to Thor.

"I don't see him _now_. But I saw him falling. I saw his pain, his disappointment. I saw how lonely he was, how damaged." His voice involuntarily darkens. "And I saw his anger, his hatred."

Eagerly, Thor demands. "Did you see him land?"

"He had nothing but his magic to save him." It is not an answer but that is all he can tell.

"Is he alive?"

The look is troubled on his face as Heimdall announces, "I cannot know for sure." He hesitates, and Thor tenses beside him with anticipation bordering on fear and hope. There is a hidden warning in Heimdall's voice when he adds, "Maybe he is. But even then, do not forget, he might be a different man, someone you don't know anymore. Maybe your brother never landed when Loki did."

Thor doesn't reply for a long time, only gazes at the dotted canvas of the world beyond the bridge, beyond Asgard as if he could see his brother if he stares hard enough. And then, suddenly everything falls back in their right place, everything that his father's words stirred up with spilling the truth. Whatever he questioned back then is crystal-clear now and obvious.

Heimdall watches him closely, watches as new strength blossoms within Thor, and as he stands there, he seems giant and fearless once again

"He will always be my brother, no matter what. I do not know if he is alive or not but I will not rest until I find a way out of Asgard, and search for his body in every corner of the worlds until I have my answer. And if he is alive, I will bring him home."

Heimdall follows him with his all-seeing eyes even when Thor has long left the bridge behind, and the Gatekeeper wonders, troubled, how Thor cannot see the real tragedy in his own words, a looming fate that clings to his feet and pulls him down like weed in the depth of a lake.

-o-

It is his funeral ceremony. There is no body to cover in heavy drapes and adorn with jewels and shining armors before laying it in a boat to burn. He cannot sit on the shore of the lake and watch the flames until they are no more than embers in the distance, torn away by the wind and scattered like myriads of stars fallen on the surface of water. So he holds the remembrance the only way he can.

It is a meticulous activity but he takes great care in every little detail with humbleness and devotion. The blacksmith offered him his help, puzzled as to why Thor would need a pair of plain, unadorned vambraces. This is something he has to do and no one else: it is how he pays respect, how he keeps his brother's memory with him.

So he takes the graver and a hammer, and etches each line of his brother's insignia into the undecorated surface of the braces: the symbol of Loki's helmet he has so many times made fun of, two curves of horns, graceful, royal.

He works on it slowly, wrapped in his own thoughts, in silence. With every stroke of the graver come the memories of happier times, their childhood, their youth: each memory, merriment and triumph, his brother's cunning, mischievous nature, his wonderfully shrewd mind, the smile Thor loved on his face when he let it loose, the brotherhood he misses so much – all engraved into the planes of the braces as they are engraved forever in his heart, representing something that Thor shared with him, something that would bind him to Loki well beyond death. It is his way to commemorate a lost brother.

And the grief that has been so far only lurking beyond the edges of his mind comes now with each stroke, gradually unfolding with every line he chisels into the metal, and still, somehow his heart is at peace now.


	2. Forever foes

**A/N:** Thank you so much for the comments, you are great3

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**Forever foes**

There is difference between thunder and thunder, lightning and lightning, he can recognize it easily after centuries of witnessing Thor pulling them out of thin air, making the particles crash and the air vibrate. He can hear the difference in how it discharges, see it in the hue, sense in its fierceness. He never really liked thunders. As a child, he feared them. Thor was hanging off the rails of their bedroom balcony and wailed at the sky with open arms like a little priest offering sacrifice. He would watch him from under the blanket, pleading him, threatening him, _crying_ for him to come back in the safety of the chamber. Thor was always fascinated by thunders that Loki never really understood. Loki was likewise fascinated by magic that Thor could never perceive.

All those storms he has experienced throughout the past months were not the Thunderer's making, none of them, and strangely, each bellow of the sky punctured a hole in his chest.

This one, though, this one he knows. And it punctures an equally deep hole in his chest as he waits.

He doesn't want to confront Thor, not yet. It has been months he last saw him, and his insides lurch with a falling sensation, falling, whirling, cold like the abyss, at the memory of their last moment. Words ring in his ears, the last words they shared, and they spark the bitterness in the pit of his stomach.

This is when Thor appears in the back of the metal vehicle, mighty and enraged. From then on, it is all about falling again, about swirling. About hitting the ground.

-o-

It has been months of captivity, locked up in Asgard like a caged animal, seething with anger and hurt, and hearing out the reports of his brother's wrongdoing and not being able to do anything about it. The brother he lost and mourned.

The brother who turned up alive.

Loki has the Tesseract and anyone can tell his intentions are as ill as ever. He is about to conquer Midgard, the realm so close to Thor's heart.

He doesn't know which thought sends the fury boiling in his chest but he suspects it's the first. Loki is alive, Loki is well, and he didn't seek them out, he didn't try to reach them while his family was wallowing in grief. It's like he truly, entirely tore the bonds between them forever, and it hurts. It hurts because Thor didn't, not for a minute. For him, he still has a brother, and he very much doubts it would ever change.

So when finally Allfather finds a way to send him to Midgard and he falls, while he falls, disappointment chews on his heart and his mouth is bitter. Does he mean so little to Loki? So little that he takes no care in anything else but destruction? He lost Loki, but Loki lost his brother too, back on the Bifröst – does he not miss Thor the way Thor misses him?

He feels the pooling bitterness ferment, and when he grabs Loki and steals him and throws him against the hard rock, it is this bitterness roaring from his chest as he bellows: "Where is the Tesseract?"

Because if he lets his focus shift from the actual danger, it is his heart he would let speak from him.

"I missed you too." And it's an ugly laugh that accompanies the remark, and Thor's stomach twists because Loki is mocking him, making fun of the thought Thor hasn't found courage to utter.

Loki is all irony and vile words, paying no respect to anything that once was the part of his life. Thor cannot take it, cannot take the memory of Heimdall warning him that the person who landed might not be the brother he once knew and loved. And this person is everything Heimdall could refer to.

"I thought you dead," he forces out, and he doesn't like how his voice cracks just a little. Loki's gaze is unwavering, testing, searching.

"Did you mourn?"

And Thor doesn't believe his ears because there is no mockery in Loki's tone, if anything, he is darkly curious, and Thor stares at him in disbelief because how can he _not_ know what they went through. He thinks of all the words that could describe it but there is nothing sufficient, nothing that remotely manages to sum it up, the darkest days of his life, the full-on questioning of their whole coexistence, and his voice is low and shattered, full of fissures but he doesn't mind it anymore because Loki _must_ understand what he means to him.

"We all did."

And from this moment on, it is just a long ride on the waves of heartbreak, and if Thor thought Loki wounded him a few months ago by proclaiming they have never been brothers, then he all but destroys him now by painting a life among shadows that he declares was his own beside Thor, _behind_ Thor.

That he has no memories akin to Thor's.

"So you take the world I love as recompense for your imagined slights," he blurts. There is a passing frown on Loki's forehead he cannot really decipher but he understands it is nothing good.

Loki stares, and for a moment, he is back in Asgard, being behind his great and bright brother's back, the slim and dark and lesser son, the ever-looming shadow, and he is ordered to stay in silence, he is mocked for the womanly magic, he is told to know his place and always follow, just follow and never _lead_. He thinks of the numerous battles Thor didn't take him to fight along; he didn't always require his presence, and it was worse than if he had never taken him at all. Every time, before each campaign, it was hope blossoming then withering when Thor didn't ask him to join. It always made him wonder if he had done something that didn't please Thor enough, but Thor decided on a whim, like with everything else, and it pained Loki that he couldn't obtain a level of permanent sustenance in his brother's eyes, and Thor never once realized it. He has the whole catalogue of such moments because Loki never forgets, not even when he wishes to, and this is a curse and blessing in one, but Thor is oblivious, he has always been, and little jabs and cuts pour from his tongue without registering it. So he says _imagined _slights, and Loki feels something spreading within his chest, something he is reluctant to call disappointment because that would mean he's cherished a foolish hope that things could change.

So when Thor grabs him, when he almost pulls him in something that looks to be a hug, and says, tone desperate and wavering and Loki knows, just _knows_ because he has always been able to read Thor that nothing matters anymore to this daft God of Thunder, no Tesseract, no invasion but this inane selfish wish -_you come home-,_ Loki doesn't understand why Thor cannot see it, if he would ever be able to see it: that he doesn't belong anymore; that maybe once he thought to have a brother but that time is over and never comes back.

But he cannot help the sudden assault of hope, senseless and ludicrous it may be, and he has no idea where it came from but it darts through him _-you come home-_, and for this weakness he would chastise himself later with no mercy, but for this horrific second while he searches the man's face who once has been his brother he remembers the golden halls and crystal waterfalls of Asgard.

His vision blurs, and he is terrified at his own weakness. He tells himself it is all just a play, Thor tries to lure him into telling him the Tesseract's whereabouts, but it sounds like a lie even to his own ears, and when he shakes his head and whispers _-I don't have it-_, even he doesn't know what he is referring to: because he surely doesn't have the Tesseract with him, and even if he did, he would never give it up, but it is also clear to him that the other one he doesn't have either: the golden halls and crystal waterfalls. He hears _home_, and this is the image swimming forth in his mind, torturing, taunting image that clenches his heart, but it's fake and empty, it's like the illusions he is capable of creating: they look like their archetype but when you touch them, they burst like a bubble. This is how Asgard is in his heart: a false illusion of home.

He is grateful to the man clad in iron for ending this conversation so abruptly, and from the mountaintop, from this perfect balcony, he is watching with great entertainment the foolish, mighty Thor engaging in a fight, not stopping to consider it for a minute that in this matter of imminent war, he is on the same side with his captors.

Is he fighting for him, the blind ignorant dolt, as if it was solely family affair? As if he could turn back the events by the mere strength of his arms. Like he could gain back what was forever lost.

He watches with equal delight and disgust as the petty fight unfolds. Never before has such arrogant display of raw power repelled him more, and on a level, it appeals to him, fascinates him. It is beyond him how such paradox can nestle within his thoughts without conflict, without stretching his sanity and tearing it.

But Thor has always been like this. Once a boy, reckless enough, broke Thor's nose. They were young, just out of adolescence. Thor engaged in this petty debate over a petty subject, one of the many. His nose broke so severely that even Eir couldn't replace it properly. Ever since then it has been visible. Frigga lamented his old noble nose but Thor was beyond gratified. It was his first battle mark and he considered it the sign of manhood. He was proudly walking around Asgard with the violet, ugly bruise, with the damaged nose bridge, and instead of mocking, laughing at him, everyone gave their respect and praise. Asgardians value honors gained in battle above everything. Loki learnt it very early in his life. He did so because, given his built and nature of self-preservation, he lacked any of the quality Thor possessed.

So he waits and smiles to himself that Midgard's secret heroes don't even start to question why he didn't simply disappear. He lets them drag him back to the flying object, and he waits for Thor to come up to him, to spin the lost thread of their conversation, and he rolls his eyes because he can already tell what Thor would say but it nevertheless angers him.

"You cannot gain, Loki."

"Oh, certainly," he hisses, tosses Thor by the shoulder but he is like a mountain, he doesn't budge. "How could I win against the mighty Thor? I can only be second behind you."

Thor is incredulous, and as far as Loki can tell, he is honestly so. "Can you not see I'm not fighting against you? I'm fighting _for_ you."

Loki doesn't even care to answer because it is all too ridiculous and he understands the words but doesn't comprehend what Thor is meaning.

"You cannot gain. Not because you cannot win. You can beat me. But you won't gain anything because you have nothing that's worth fighting for."

He laughs coldly, and now it's his turn to be incredulous. "Look around, Odinson."

"You want Midgard? You want to rule them? You want the throne? You can have it, yes. But it won't make you rightful, worthwhile. Because behind everything, this is what you deeply desire."

And Loki stares at him in white fury and puzzlement, and though Thor's tone didn't deliver any hint of intention to hurt, he growls in utter scorn. "Worthwhile? Wouldn't it be just foolish of someone like me?"

And he thinks this is the last time they talk about it, or talk about anything if he can have it his own way.

-o-

They keep Loki in the Stark Tower, locked up, bound and monitored constantly. He didn't want any of their help and treated his own wounds and cuts himself. Thor wants to give him this night, to let him sleep in a proper bed because he very much doubts Loki would have such luxury when they are back to Asgard.

Thor is plagued with sharp pangs of worry. Next morning, he would take Loki back home to face justice, and Thor is uneasy and weary to the bone at the thought of it. He has so many times imagined it, back when he thought Loki dead: he all but willed the childish desire into reality that he would go and track him down and take him back like a lost and found treasure, and they would celebrate and he would do everything to make up for whatever went wrong in the past. His head reels how different it turned out. It is absurd and wrong that he returns his brother to their home in shackles like a criminal, and in all honesty, even if his heart cracks at the thought, Loki is.

It is still beyond him to capture the suddenness of everything. How strange a feeling it is, how it makes his head spin that the greatest changes, the gravest turns in life happen during the course of a few hours or days. So short time, so trifling when someone lives for centuries. It makes him feel like the slow oaf Loki always called him. He is used to having enough time for everything. His world that has toppled and turned upside down is still rattling inside him without a place. Just what would have been a mere nightmare not more than a half year agone is now his life with a brother he is forced to fight.

He knows there would hardly be an opportunity once they are back to Asgard. Everyone would want a piece of Loki, but for now, it is only Loki and him. For now, he has a chance to have a private moment with his brother, and Thor has never been known for someone who wouldn't do everything in his power for what he believes in, even when he foresees its difficulties.

When he enters the room they keep Loki in, his brother doesn't even look up, and Thor has a moment to scrutinize him, undisturbed. Beside his battered form, Loki is haggard, his eyes are dull and lackluster in the hollows of his face, and he had been so even before he was beaten and defeated. Thor has seen him like that only once when Loki disappeared for weeks, centuries ago. Thor just came back from a foray he had gone on with Sif and the Warriors Three, and Loki wasn't at home, and as his parents informed him, he had been gone for some time then. When he didn't show up for days, Thor grew worried and guilty for not taking his brother with them. Then Loki came back, thin and almost translucent, so pale like the star-light. He had been up to the rocks above the Asgard palace. That's when he started to practice magic. Thor recalls how he wanted to march up to the mountains and smoke the Sorcerer out of its cave for doing that to Loki. He never dared to ask what exactly Loki had to sacrifice to obtain the knowledge of magic but he is not a complete dullard: there had to be a price.

And he is afraid, there is a price Loki promised to pay now as well. To the Chitauri or someone even worse.

Loki looks up then, and his gaze glints coldly behind the shattered resolution and vigor.

"Came to gloat over my latest defeat against you, _brother?_"

The word on Loki's lips scrapes Thor's ears. It pains him how he says it -_brother_- like it was a curse, something vile and aversive, something that disgusts him. It hurts him more than the occasions when he outright refused to be addressed as brother.

"You genuinely deem me such person?"

"Oh how could I forget your immaculate soul!" Thor only frowns, and his silence hurls Loki into deeper disdain. "Oh no, I know why you are here. You want to comprehend what went wrong with me, right? Nothing, Thor. Maybe I have always been like this."

"It is not true," Thor says, and there is no room for debate in his tone, so Loki doesn't even attempt. "So this is how you regard yourself? Does it make everything easier? It helps you in thinking your deeds would ever cease me to regard you as my brother?"

It's tragedy in itself in a way, and now that he said it out loud, it makes it somehow eternal and truer.

"You have my trust, then you lie and betray my trust, then you do something that in a wicked way makes up for it, and…"

The ever recurring cycle. This is how it always has been. Loki lies, cheats, then helps him with advices. Always like this. Loki falls, Loki rises… He doesn't add -though Loki might not even care- that he cannot help it: that Loki is always _forgiven_. He doesn't add it because he fears it would serve only as encouragement for his brother to know that he can stretch his patience. Maybe there is a limit there, but Thor doesn't know. He dreads it. He isn't too keen on musing what would happen if one time Loki crosses a line Thor is unable to name right now. What if there is something he would never be able to forgive? How would they go on then? How would _he_? It frightens him, the unnamable limit, but the lack of it would frighten him in equal measure.

Thor knows it is weakness. Knows that his greatest fear is that one day he might need to confront Loki in a fight for life and death. Because maybe as strong and formidable he is in physical battle as weak he appears on this level: he is unable to erase or overwrite centuries of memories, and he would forever be biased for the brother he grew up with. Maybe it is weakness, it is foolish, it is even dangerous, but when he looks at Loki, though he sees how fearsome he became, how twisted in his deeds and logic, he also sees the thin, raven-haired boy with sparkling eyes who clung onto him on stormy evenings when nobody could see it, the brother he loved so dearly and who on some point, Thor is sure of that, loved him back just equally. No one can expect him not to see how they were as children. He cannot betray his own heart, even if Loki did exactly just that with him. They have been there for each other ever since he knows his name. He cannot give up the belief that under the rage and hurt, under the madness, there is still the brother he loves. He cannot give it up. If he gives up, he loses him, and then there is so little remained to believe in.

And he knows Loki doesn't understand it. He knows Loki cannot grasp why he is so stubborn to accept what everyone else did long ago: that he is a monster. It makes Thor sad because it tells so clearly that the first person who truly and wholly has given up on Loki is himself. And whenever Thor shows his affection, treats him like the brother he used to be, he is reminded of his past self – of someone he forgot he has once been.

Loki rolls his eyes with undisguised resentment. He wants nothing more than stop dwelling on something that would not change but making Thor realize the same has always been a tedious task. Nit-picking, though, has proved to be a good strategy so far in averting Thor's narrow-minded focus.

"That is your problem. Many times I have told you I wasn't your brother, you half-wit."

And indeed, Thor jumps where he wants him to. "You're talking about blood. Blood matters nothing. It is not blood that makes us brothers, Loki. We are related beyond that."

"Oh, when has the Mighty Thor become so wise?"

"It is no wisdom. I have a heart, and it doesn't make me scared."

"Oh, this again," Loki laughs and it's a teasing laugh, mocking, resenting, and it delivers no warmth. Then it fades into a wry line across his face and when he puts his next words together in a chain, he doesn't deem them a lie, he believes they are coming from sincerity. "When I say I never was your brother, I don't refer to blood, Thor. I refer to all those things that made us be _not_ brothers all these years. Moments when you were not my brother, not the brother you should have been. Not how brothers should be."

He watches Thor's face, watches how he, with cruel precision, touched and stabbed at a sore point, but his words somehow aches in _his_ chest, too. He cannot decide on the taste in his mouth, if the bitterness is coming from the truth or the falseness of his accuse.

"Do you wish to know the key? The answer?"

Thor regards him warily. He recognizes the curling, taunting bane in Loki's voice, the all too ready helpfulness. He knows there is a jab behind them, a poisoned blade of a knife ready to strike but he nods nonetheless because when Loki uses this tone, there is usually truth mingled with the pain, and he wants to know, wants to understand even if there is a price of ache he has to pay. But deep within, if he is utterly honest to himself, when he is brave enough to admit, he already knows the answer. The answer that keeps him awake at night with the weight of guilt sitting on his chest.

"You have taken a part in this, Thor. In me standing here and you standing there. In what I am now."

His hands ball into fists, and Thor already feels the prick of the knife. "And how is that true?"

"Why? You think monsters are born out of whim?" Loki's gaze is dripping of irony and something deeper, something dark sits in his eyes and almost swallows the emerald shine. He waits for the answer to sink in, waits for Thor to start to debate but there is only silence, and in the silence, Loki adds softly: "You had mother, you had Odin. You had your friends. The noblemen, the warriors, the whole realm worship the Golden Son of Asgard. And you had me."

He smiles.

Thor sees the smile twitch around the edges, ever so slightly, and he thinks this is the first time he catches the mask Loki has fabricated for who knows what reason throughout the centuries slip. And its slip hits him harder than expected because he realizes the point is touching Loki so painfully that he loses control.

"And I…" He smiles again, and it's all but mirthful. "I had only you."

It is so simple a statement, and it occurs to Thor that this is exactly the reason why it tears at his heart. He knows it's not entirely his fault that Loki never has been able to make friends but he feels guilty nevertheless.

_I only ever wanted to be your equal._

Thor remembers now. In the rage of the battle of words and fists, he didn't have time to ponder. He was bewildered by it, but dismissed it as one in the row of surreal things Loki just unleashed on him. The pain came in delay. Loki, with one single line, overwrote memories of centuries, their whole childhood, and Thor was left to doubt everything they shared, if what he remembers was real or fake. If they really could have different takes on the same events. If what he keeps fondly in his mind is something that drove his brother into madness.

"You still have me. You always will," Thor says quietly.

The mask shifts back, and Loki is again sardonic and haughty. "You want me back but not for myself. You want your little brother, the ever second, the weak, the petty. Gold shines brighter when placed against coal, and you acted on that contrast. On me being the odd one out."

"Not in my heart. You've never been the odd one out there."

He shrugs, shakes Thor's words off like they were droplets of mist. "Maybe. But neglect and inconsiderateness can achieve the same destruction as open cruelty, and you did that to me, Thor. Intentional or not."

Thor looks, and there is a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, cold and heavy like iron when he becomes aware of something that has never occurred to him before. He usually wears his emotions like robes for everyone to see them but for the few times he had something that bothered him, Loki was the first he turned to. Never the Warrior Three, never Sif, never his parents. It was always Loki, and he trusted his brother's judgment more than anyone's. It is the first time he realized that over all these years, Loki rarely confided in him. He knew he wasn't the best man to give advices, but he could listen, he wanted to listen… _now_ he wants to. He regrets so many things now. Maybe Loki sensed it, he sensed that Thor wanted only to be listened, selfishly but never intentionally. He should have been more mindful. They all should have been. Loki was so different, so delicate like a jewel made by the hands of the craftiest dwarves in the Nine Realms. He was never the worthiest man for such preciousness and fragility. His hands could only break things, and he feared, in his thoughtlessness he broke Loki.

He realizes only now that over a thousand years, he still didn't get to _know_ him.

Exasperated, Thor cries out, because this is all he can do to halt the slowly oozing poison in his mind. "Why have you never told me when I hurt you?"

"What for? To make you take it back, and the next time do it again?"

"I'm better than that. You should have given me credit."

"You are fire, Thor. You first do the rampage then think."

And Thor has to admit Loki is right in this.

"I failed you," Thor says, and it is so simple, so terrifyingly humble and solemn that for a second, surprise springs faster on Loki's face than he could stop it from leaking through his indifference, and he feels pity for him, for the great, golden, infallible son who is forced to acknowledge his foibles. "And I failed myself. I failed to show what you mean because I took you for granted. It was never once out of spite. All I always wanted was the best for you but maybe I failed to realize the best in my standards very much differed from yours. I know how my means can be rough, and not as chiseled as yours, and now I see the damage it caused. I deeply regret it, brother."

Loki's face is detached but he has a twinkle in his eyes that Thor cannot properly decipher. It can be anything from surprise to appreciation and even to condescension.

Loki doesn't say anything because the moment is the closest he would ever get to victory. At the sight of Thor's weary face, he revels in the knowledge that Thor finally understood that part of it is his creation, part of what Loki became, this threat on his precious realms is all his doing. With his dismissal and ostracism he created a monster he is bound to fight for eternity, no matter if he cares for him or not, Thor is still forced to fight him forever. And this is his only consolation and he squeezes the dubious pleasure out of the knowledge that the rotting hell that corrodes everything within him and he can never reconcile with is now passed to Thor like a heritage.


	3. Forever friends

**A/N:** So, this is the final installment. See you in the next story;)  
And thank you for the comments you left so far. You are great!

* * *

**Forever friends**

The same memory resurfaces in their minds, they both are certain of it: the last time they stood together on the same spot, before the molded golden doors to the throne room. Thor's coronation day.

The day when everything started to fall apart.

The present is like the mockery of that long past day. They reenact it, and it's skewed, warped all to the wrong way. The metal of their cuirasses are battered and lost their shine, capes are torn and burnt, and so are their gazes. There is no vigorous anticipation, no playful taunting there, only the hovering shadow of their losses. They look defeated, both of them do, the captor and the captive. And on the greater playground, from every possible slant, they indeed are.

It has never occurred to Loki before how their own garments are just costumes and camouflage. The golden son of Asgard wears silver and grey iron, while the second son, the lesser son, the son born in shadows and cold, is clad in golden. They are all lies, he ponders now until he remembers the softness of gold and durability of iron, and it makes him bitter.

They are halting here for long moments and Loki doesn't understand why. Upon their arrival, Thor sent the einherjar guards for the Allfather, but the Thunderer is now hesitating. His face is tight as he turns Loki toward him, and Loki is almost startled when Thor reaches for the back of his head, afraid that he is planning to smother him with another display of foolish affection.

Instead, and it renders his blood to a standstill in his veins in astonishment, with the same serene expression Thor removes the muzzle without a single word. His fingers run along the manacles around Loki's wrists, it's a cursory touch and almost _apologetic_, and Loki feels the disbelief creep on his face because Thor by no means should be so unreasonable and emotional, and still, on a horrifying level it affects Loki, too. The shackles, however, stay.

When he finds his voice, it is satisfactorily unwavering. "Aren't you afraid you would be banished again for disobeying the Allfather in the favor of the Jötun dog?"

Thor glares at him, and it's nothing reassuring. "I would hit anyone for saying such unsavory words about you. You are no exception, brother."

Loki huffs under his breath. "Then the truth itself is unsavory."

Loki's hostility toward their father aggravates Thor. For some reason he suddenly recalls the first time their father entered the Odinsleep. He was still a child and it terrified him, the motionless form of the Allfather. Their mother soothed him by telling it was all fine and natural, and though he didn't understand, he was willing to believe it. Loki was younger, though, pale and frightened. Thor remembers he cried only because Loki rarely did. He recalls that night so sharply as if it wasn't hundreds of years ago. He remembers how Loki went missing the following morning. Thor woke up in their room that morning and found his brother's bed empty. He has never seen their mother so petrified and horror-stricken. Eventually they found Loki. He was sleeping at the feet of their father, not more than a curled up bundle of wool and cotton under the golden dome of Odin's bed, and when their mother asked him if he had been afraid during the night, Loki shook his head. He pulled forth the wooden sword that belonged to Thor and said with severity so unlike of young children that he was watching out for father, because in his sleep, he couldn't defend himself.

Thor wonders if Loki would ever do that again. He very much doubts it.

"Do not behave like it is any easy for our father…"

"Oh, I'm sure it is not," Loki says with biting tone. "Calling him consequently _our_ father doesn't make it true, Thor."

"Correcting me consequently won't make anything _untrue_, _brother_," Thor snorts. He shakes his head. "We have been living under the same roof all our lives. I have loved you for a thousand years, in every waking moment of my life. You think there is anything you do or say that can make all of this undone?"

"You are being sentimental again."

And it doesn't work, his irony is powerless, it glances off Thor like a knife with a too dull tip. The look in Thor's eyes makes Loki want to shrink back, and it's fear that engulfs him, fear that Thor would try to pull him down in the emotional pit he is wallowing in, the fear that he would actually, eventually succeed.

"You once told me: however envious you might be sometimes, I should never doubt that you love me. Do you remember that?"

Loki doesn't look at him, and for a moment he is taken aback that Thor still remembers this moment that seems like it belonged to another age, another life. How ironic to mention it right here, right now. It took place at this very spot, and through the whirlwind of the events during the past months, his mind is able to recall the scene only as if it happened behind misty windows. He sees himself, sees Thor, he sees the shadow of betrayal looming above their heads. All unclear, blurred. The feeling, though, it's a stab through his whole being. _Never doubt that I love you._

He understands Thor's question easily. He can translate it into its true meaning. _Do you remember that?_

_Do you still love me?_

And he is horrified, not because he can answer -_no. never did. never will_.- but because he can't, not even to himself.

Though the words feel foul on his tongue, he says it anyway. "It was a long time ago. It's part of the past now. Things have changed."

"Maybe in you. But never in me. And I will never forget that once I had a brother who loved me just as much."

Loki turns away. Suddenly he doesn't know who he is angrier with: himself or Thor. The big oaf managed to reach him with his pathos, and Loki is honestly surprised that his own words cut him just as painfully as it certainly did Thor.

"I wouldn't want to make the Allfather wait too long," Loki advices and it's a retreat, an escape from a bad to a worse. But he can deal with the worse, he believes. Not with Thor, not now.

Thor silently agrees but it's only display. His hand slips around his brother's elbow, his strides are firm but inside, with each step up to the door, he is crumbling.

It is the old defense, he recognizes it. It was in his blood from the very beginning, the never ceasing urge to protect the family but above all, the brother who failed to grow as big and intimidating in built as he did. It's his second nature, really. It was the first and maybe the only command from his parents that he took so seriously that he is ready to follow even if it costs his life – he has done it even against their own parents, even when he _knew_ Loki was no innocent – more in the past, though, than recently but still, it is embedded in his body like a motor reflex.

He remembers when it was born, the reflex. It followed a fight between him and Loki who was not more than a mere toddler, a childish fight over a broken toy, not more. Their mother pulled him to her and instead of scolding him, she said: "This is your little brother, Thor, yours, and only yours. You will grow up together, and this gives you something that you find nowhere else: people come and go in one's life but siblings stay forever… he can be the closest person to you, as you can be the closest person to him. Protect him as you are the older. Protect him, because if you don't do it, no one will."

And ever since then, those words have been sewn in his heart. Maybe back then, all he could hear and understand was the word 'yours'; that this soft and gurgling and sweet-scented new toy was all _his_. He was a proud and selfish boy. Even his first word was his own name – with the involuntary shame, sudden fondness for Loki gushes forth in him at the memory of their mother telling them that they shared the same act for Loki's first word was, as well, Thor's name.

He always acted upon it without a second thought, no matter against whom he should go. His friends weren't particularly fond of Loki, Thor knew it, but they didn't dare to vocalize it for knowing Thor would hit anyone saying a foul word of his brother.

Loki has always been different, and children, as clear-sighted and cruel they can be, never failed to point it out. It was Sif, back then golden-haired, shining Sif, who started it. The first day they met, the two princes let out of their secluded golden world, she looked at Loki and asked, "Why does he have dark hair?"

Thor looked back above his shoulder at his brother, took in the sight of the raven locks he had known almost as well as his own, turned to stare at the new children, at people crossing the space around them, thought back at all the guests and guards at the palace, their own parents, and he glanced at Loki again like he saw him for the first time. Nobody had hair like his, everyone was red and golden and silver-white. He saw the look on his brother's face, the slackened jaw and unblinking eyes. Back then Loki wasn't the master of his emotions as much as these days.

Thor had the most affectionate smile on his face, and when he spoke, he directed his words at Loki and not the other children. "Because he is special." And this was his argument. He was rewarded with the slightest smile but it was a unique treasure.

It never stopped, though, the questions, the hints, telling Thor how strange his brother was, how unlike any other person in Asgard, how out-of-place; growing more oft after Loki started to practice magic. It always infuriated him, the insinuation he never understood or maybe it has never even been intended but it enraged him nevertheless. The remarks stopped abruptly from his friends when he got into a fist-fight with another boy and gave him a decorative black-eye for calling Loki puny and strange, a mockery of Asgardians, doing so with Loki within earshot. Thor jumped on the boy like a rabid beast with foam at the mouth and bloodshot eyes. Later that day Loki huffed that he didn't need saving but he tended Thor's bruises with tender touches and a soft smile he didn't try hard enough to hide.

This protection is what makes Thor's hand wrap around his brother's arm. And maybe, he seeks strength through this touch, too.

Loki has only the slightest falter to his steps as they enter the throne room. There is no one inside but the Allfather perched on the throne, and a handful of guards lining the walls, silent and unmoving as shadows. Loki expected the witans to be present, all thirsty of his blood, and it's a surprise they are alone.

They cross the room, and the bitterness engulfs him. The golden walls, the fan of cursive stairs of the dais and the magnificent plains of the throne slap him in the face. The last time he was here, he was the rightful king of Asgard. He was the one sitting on the throne with Gungnir in his hand, with the burden of the realm on his shoulders, with the weight of trying to be _seen_ by the father who has never been his father sitting on his heart. In the end, it crushed him. Then again, perhaps he was destined to fall from the very beginning.

He remembers he didn't sleep a wink after Thor was banished. He was roaming the corridors, the dungeons, the chamber far below, coated in the bluish hue of the truth of his origin, and he was so tired that there were times he couldn't think straight, but when he tried to sleep, he found himself wide awake. There was a moment somewhere between sending the Destroyer to Midgard and setting his plans in motion when he stopped and tried to remember when had been the last time he ate. The moment the frost giant grabbed his arm back in Jötunheim and it left him unharmed shattered something within him, and everything spilled out, the inside was suddenly outside, the up was down, and he knew it would never be the same again though he didn't know the answers they had kept from him all his life. Something stopped working in him that day and hasn't started again ever since.

The Allfather looks small and old, almost lost under the enormous mass of the throne and golden canopy, and Loki suddenly doesn't understand how he ever could fear this man. He doesn't understand the broken look, the disappointment and regret: to be foiled in his hopes, Odin should have had hopes to begin with, hopes in Loki, but it never looked like so. How can he fail a standard if there has never been a standard set? Apart from following all orders with bowed head, of course, waiting in the background until he occurs to be useful. He doesn't mind being the source of chagrin in that matter.

Odin is addressing his lines to him but they are weightless in Loki's mind. They are nothing more than mere respite of the final word.

Thor is standing beside him all the while, a hand casually around his elbow. It's not restraining, Loki isn't even sure for what purpose he is keeping his hand there. When Odin speaks up, iron fingers are tightening around his arm, and Loki steals a glance at Thor, at the frown over his eyes and lips, and for a moment he is wondering which of them is about to receive the sentence. Thor's jaw flexes, and Loki cannot help but think it is both of them.

But there is no decision, only a postponement untypical of the Allfather. For the time being, he is to be kept in the cells under the palace, hidden from the world like a blot on the family's immaculate reputation, the disgrace to Asgard, stripped off the only thing he ever valued the most in himself, the thing that nobody else did: his magic.

-o-

There is a shuffle on the other side of the latticework of the cell door, and Loki's eyes fly at it, a snarl already on his lips to bark at Thor for not leaving him alone even here, but it is not Thor entering in the next moment. It catches him off-guard, and for a moment all pretense is lost.

"Mother."

It's only seconds later when Frigga is already in his cell that Loki realizes he called her _mother_. Somehow he isn't able to make himself call her anything else, and it grabs at his heart.

"Loki," and her voice cracks, it's a whisper only, filled with emotions to the brim, so thick that it's almost palpable.

She steps toward him without a word, and like in the old times, she pulls him in a warm embrace with the unquestionable authority and right of a mother, and suddenly he wants to be a small boy again, a boy with no blurs on his soul, a boy who lets himself think he can hide for a while if he snuggles up close enough to his mother.

So he lifts his arm, because he wants to hide, he wants to forget.

And his chains rattle.

And the blurs spot his soul so much that he cannot see how it has been before.

And everything that boy has ever believed in is a lie.

At the jingling sound of the shackles, Frigga flinches, her face dives deeper into the crook of her son's shoulder, and Loki freezes just a second before he is engulfed in her scent, in the motherly comfort he has known all his life, and there is only so much he can do right now to keep him from breaking, keep him from telling himself that a lie can be true sometimes. He bends his knees and lowers his head for Frigga being considerably shorter and he manages to hug her back without tension in his muscles, and for a long moment they are just standing there, engrossed in a moment they stole from the past.

Frigga pulls away first, cradling his face in her palms, and she smiles. He can see the twinkle of pearly tears in the corner of her eyes, and he bites down on the inside of his mouth.

"My dear, my son," she whispers, and there are so many things she doesn't say but they are there in her eyes.

Loki's lips open, this is habit too, being around his stubborn brother, _once_-brother, taught him so. His voice is low, solemn and beaten to his own ears. "You know I'm not."

Frigga is not as incredulous as sad, but she looks at her so fondly that his chest suddenly seems to shrink and squeeze his insides.

"Yes, you are. How can you think otherwise? You were only a baby when you arrived here. You were so small, so fragile. There was no question in me that I would raise you and protect you as my own. From that moment, I consider you my son." Her hands smooth the wrinkles of his tunic, an unconscious gesture that doesn't make sense in the given moment, but it's full of care. "I was there when you cried, I was at your bedside when you were sick, when you were tormented by a terrifying dream, when you felt lonely or afraid. I was there at your first steps, first words, when you skinned your knees, in all those moments when you needed someone to hold you. You think it doesn't make you my son? A mother's heart isn't born only of blood and flesh. These are the things that made me your mother, Loki."

Her hand is so warm against his cheek, and Loki is suddenly terrified at the prickling sensation behind his eyes.

"Now I know from whom Thor inherited his sentiment," he chokes out with a trembling smirk, and Frigga laughs softly.

"Your brother loves you so dearly, Loki. Thor is brash sometimes, stubborn and yes, unmindful, too, but I think he loves you more than he does anyone else in the Nine Realms. You must be blind not to see it, and I know my son's mind is sharper than any swords in this realm. So tell me, darling, are you deceiving yourself?"

He moves to untangle from her arms but Frigga fists his tunic and holds him in place easily. "I do not wish to talk about this."

Frigga doesn't mind his protests, and softly she adds. "You are unwilling to accept it because you are incapable of believing anyone can care for you when you don't care for yourself anymore?"

With a spark of defiance, Loki says, "Oh but I do."

"No, Loki. Pursuing ambitious purposes doesn't mean you do it because you are in peace with yourself."

Loki stares, and it's a moment of utter nakedness. And the most terrifying in it is that he cannot decide if he feels annoyed or relieved.

"Shouldn't you admonish me now for doing _horrible_ things, give me lecture, and not try to…" he is at loss how to name it, or he simply doesn't want to find the word. Frigga smiles and says it for him.

"Fix you?"

"There is nothing to be fixed anymore."

"For a mother's heart, there always is. I leave the lectures to your father."

At that, he finally withdraws, but not in his heart. He realizes, there he would never be able to.

-o-

He has another visitor. It is Thor, he recognizes the sound of his steps as if they were his own much before Thor emerges at the cell door. He looks at his shackles with a frown like he doesn't understand how they got around Loki's wrists and ankles, like they were out-of-place in a prison cell.

"How have we come this far?" he murmurs. It's so soft that Loki wonders if he only imagined it.

He doesn't know the answer. Sometimes it feels like their story, the story of two brothers growing up together is a story that belongs to someone else, and there is no continuance between that and this moment in the dungeons of Asgard. There is an abyss-like gap in it, as there is in his heart.

It seems out of context, and yet darkly fitting, when he whispers, a low hiss, harsh and bitter: "You have no idea how it is. Every time I still dream of falling."

Thor's laughter is an ugly crack, a strangled voice scratching against his throat. "You say I have no idea? Every time, I dream of you leaving. Shrinking, disappearing, drawing away, falling. Every time I dream of it, and there is nothing I can do about it. I scream my throat hoarse but there is nothing I can do that would bring you back."

In the dim light of the dungeon, Loki watches him closely, and suddenly he realizes how everything that happens between them links them more and more for eternity, makes the bonds he is so keen on tearing become even stronger and more tangled, instead of loosening it. There can be no step for him without effecting Thor, and there are always two sides to the same thing. He understands Thor's dreams aren't only about seeing him letting go Gungnir. They are all about _losing_ him in every aspect possible, standing by and watching him growing isolated for long centuries, and the distance they have put between them has never hurt so much before.

Thor's head falls forward, and he mumbles like he is ashamed of it: "There was not one minute when I went without wishing I was falling with you."

-o-

It's days or weeks of confinement, he finds it hard to tell. On one point, they removed his shackles but the collar around his neck, the collar that keeps his magic at bay stays.

Thor comes every day. He comes as though Loki was lying in the healing room, plagued by boredom and it was his duty to lift his mood. Sometimes he comes and reminisces about the past, reciting old tales and adventures, their childhood, his fondest memories. Other times he talks about completely irrelevant events around the court, maybe just to fill the silence Loki always lets hanging. Sometimes he comes, sits on the other side of the bars and says nothing, and they are sitting like that, an unmoving mirror and its image, and it's peaceful. He always comes, and Loki waits for him. First it's the worst kind of anticipation, it's annoyance to the very last bits, later it's the resignation of someone expecting the inevitable rainfall upon seeing the overcast sky. Lately it morphed into something Loki doesn't feel the need to label anymore.

There is no mirror in the cell but he knows how shriveled he might look, how shattered and crumpled like a dying leaf, and each day he fades a bit more like smoke. The dungeons and his own defeat are taking the light from him, and he is surprised because it looks like they are taking it from Thor, too. As Loki dwindles and turns more transparent by each day, so does Thor. Loki sees how his eyes are dulled, his smiles are heavy and way too few and far between, his steps grew weighty and there is no lightness in them anymore – not anymore the bright sun shining over Asgard, and he thinks it is his doing, too. He thinks that when he fell from the Bifröst, he maybe stole Thor's light.

"Father is soon to enter the Odinsleep again," Thor says one day.

Thor is sitting on the other side of the bars on the hard floor, and Loki is no more than two steps away from him, shrouded in the darkness. This is their progress, it went unconscious and unnoticed that he slowly moved closer and closer whenever Thor showed up over the last occasions.

Loki says nothing. A question is hanging in the air.

"I would be the king for that time." Loki frowns but there is no bragging in Thor's voice.

"Are you nervous?"

"Yes." The smile is almost bashful on his face, a little bit dumb, too, and it's a glimpse of the old Thor he hasn't seen for quite some time. "I would need a good counselor."

The frown deepens, and suddenly it feels even colder in the dungeon. "And what would you do? Come here each day for my advices? Or tie me to the throne like a good dog, on leash and collared, so when you need me I would be at hand?"

"Loki." It's a sigh, and Loki isn't sure if it is amused or tired.

Thor regards him solemnly from the other side of the bars, looks about the cell, the chains hanging off the walls, Loki's collar half hidden behind the locks of his hair, his magic he cannot see.

It has taken Thor decades to get used to the fact itself that Loki is capable of doing magic, and it's not only a whim, a childish habit but he can actually make use of it in many aspects that are beyond tricks and half-innocent mischief. They battled against a warlord in Muspelheim when Thor saw him use magic for the first time. It was a fierce fight, they could barely stand their ground, and Mjölnir was in desperate work. His friends, the Warriors Three fought in group, watching each other's back but when Thor looked up and searched for his brother, he saw Loki was pushed to the outskirt and fought his way out alone. Thor moved toward him with every intention to get to his brother's side – Loki wasn't so battle-worn as he was, fighting and sparring has never been in his utmost interest, and it made Thor watch out for him in every battle he took Loki along. And so he moved, wielding Mjölnir on his way when he saw. He saw it before it even happened, the warrior charging at Loki, wild and enormous, crazed with blood and his lips twisted in a battle-cry. Loki stood there motionless, frozen to the spot, and Thor stood there too in his utter terror, heedless of everything else. He wanted to yell and warn Loki, to urge him to move, but his brother's name stuck in his throat and he feared it would stay there forever and never let him breathe again. The warrior leapt.

And fell through Loki.

Everything was a blur in Thor's mind. Loki, the real one, unharmed and oblivious, stepped out of the shadows, and Thor remembers charging at his brother, on his way knocking everyone out with a swing of his hammer. He recalls grabbing Loki's arms, shouting strangled words of disbelief, of horror, of relief that didn't make sense, just a string of syllables woven of fear and worry; he told him not to ever do it again, then he took everything back when he realized Loki saved his own life with the trick, so he just yelled because there was nothing else he could do to make Loki's name unstuck in his throat, to swallow or spit it out. Loki had the strangest smile on his lips, a bit bewildered, and raised his hand to Thor's face, his thumb brushing across his cheekbones, and Thor stared at him, stared at the wetness on the pad of his thumb, and he realized for the first time the tears of anger and relief that had sprung to his eyes without his knowledge.

"Worry not, brother, I can take care of myself," Loki said.

"I thought…" Thor didn't finish it, couldn't finish it but there was no need for it. I thought _I lost you_. I thought _I failed you_. Loki smiled, and there were so many words unsaid in the way he patted his shoulder. And there were so many words unsaid in how Thor grabbed him by the back of his neck and pulled him close so their foreheads touched briefly. _I cannot afford losing you._

And somehow, in the end of all things, he just did.

"I would release you." He says now. "And I would remove the collar."

Loki eyes him in silence, astonished and berating simultaneously as if saying _'Why would you do that, you fool?'_, and Thor understands.

"I would give your magic back. I'm no fool, Loki, I don't blindly trust you, but I also understand your magic is what defines you. I can keep you around, collared and stripped off it but it wouldn't be you." There is a falter in his words. For a second, he looks like he is unable to meet Loki's eyes. His fingers curl around the iron bar as he leans forward. "I regret I never appreciated enough your skills. It is like I never appreciated _you_. I'm sorry I haven't realized this before. Maybe things…"

"It would have happened anyhow," Loki dissents softly.

It is a long pause this time, and they are sitting there in mutual silence that hasn't been so cordial for too long time. Loki grips the bar as well, their knuckles touching. There is a faintly taunting smirk on his lips. "Why can you be wise only in hindsight…?"

"It aggravates me just as much."

They stare at each other, and it is not hostile, it is almost peaceful but still only the ghost of how it has been before.

Thor muses whether it would forever be like this: with them staring at each other from the opposite sides, walls with cracks so gaping like the grid they are clutching now towering between them, but always entwining, always bound to the other. He thinks, and it is a disturbing idea, that this, the eternal feud, is better than nothing at all. For this moment, he doesn't mind that he will probably chase Loki for an eternity with the never dying hope that he can fix him because it means he has a brother.

There is a small smile upon Loki's lips as if he knew what is on Thor's mind, the smile is sardonic around the edges but spiced with something soft that reminds Thor of the brother he has once been. Loki reaches through the bars, places a hand on his shoulder and he shakes his head like Thor again did something he should be chastised for.

"You big oaf."

Thor's heart swells and he longs to pull Loki in an embrace they haven't shared for ages. Instead he slips his hand on the nape of Loki's neck and smirks back.

"You have enough wit for the two of us, brother. And it will suffice."

It's not how he imagines his future, always the second man, but Thor's intentions are as pure as ever, and for the moment Loki affords to be magnanimous.

"It will," he agrees.

He doesn't add but it's there in the back of his mind that it will suffice. It will suffice _for a while_.

* * *

**A/N:** I know there was not particular reason to add the scene with Frigga but I just couldn't resist because mothers...  
Anyhow, thank you for reading, faving it and especially for leaving a comment. I finish this one here because it doesn't really matter what Loki's sentence would be, it's not the point I wanted to make. Whatever happens it's nothing new: these two will always be all these things for each other and there are more sides to their relationship than simple love or hate.


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